Shooting on a budget?
Want to save even more money on digital photography? Some simple guidelines can set you on the right path.
Batteries, Batteries, Batteries
Without a doubt, the single largest drain on your wallet once you've made your initial investment is in batteries. A digital camera with a decent LCD preview screen can chew through batteries like nobody's business, and in the budget space you're unlikely to see an inbuilt rechargeable battery on a decent camera.
The first tip here might seem a little obvious, but it has to be said in any case. When you're not using the camera, take the batteries out. The drain on batteries when the camera isn't on is quite minimal, but if you're going to leave the camera in a cupboard for a month, it'll add up pretty quickly. There's also the added complication that an aging battery (especially a cheap battery) may leak, damaging your digital photography investment beyond repair.
Your other rechargeable option aside from a dock is to invest in some standard rechargeables in whatever form your camera requires and a recharging kit. This is almost always cheaper than the comparable dock, although you obviously don't get the benefits of easy uploading and you may run into warranty issues if the camera gets damaged by faulty batteries.
Memory planning
The other large expense you're likely to encounter with digital photography is the price of additional memory. Unless you use your camera very sparingly, you'll need to upgrade the memory; the best inbuilt memory of any of the cameras we reviewed here was a relatively paltry 16MB. You might be tempted to go all out and get the single largest unit of memory you can get, but that's not always the best budgetary option. Aside from the fact that bigger memory cards obviously cost more money, you could also be overspending by buying a 128MB SD card if you're never going to fill a 64MB card in one go. Likewise, if you want flexibility between a number of cameras, a number of smaller cards may make better budgetary sense depending on your exact work patterns.
Print it
It may seem obvious, but photographic printing paper isn't cheap. Many cameras feature a direct to printer capability, but that's something we'd steer clear of in most cases; you're gaining a little bit of time but sacrificing an awful lot of potential quality adjustment that can be performed in your PC package of choice.
Another budgetary printing option may not seem so obvious; the use of professional photo finishers. While you'll pay more per print for a photo lab to process your photo prints, you also don't have to cover the cost of ink printing, misprints or any other errors in the printing process. This is especially true of larger photo prints, where the cost of media rises sharply.
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I have just seen an advertisement for the CX4230 in a pop up when I went to the Korean Herald newspaper at http://www.koreaherald.co.kr/index.asp . It was selling there for 185000 Won which equals AU$204, half what we would pay for it. I wonder why we can't get it at that price here?